Land of Pollution: Yomi No Kuni
by Mauodd
Summary: Sakura has faced a plethora of oddities during the war. The resurrection of the dead, hordes of monsters, and the appearance of a rabbit eared woman intent on the genocide of ninja. Then suddenly she and Obito Uchiha, former madman, are in a whole new world - or maybe dimension, she isn't sure - filled with Heroes and Gods and a government agency called S.H.I.E.L.D. Edited.
1. Chapter 1

Warnings for Spoilers of Everything. I'll be doing a lot of interconnected referencing to lots of different series. Avengers, Thor, Naruto, Captain America, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Probably others, who knows.

Anyways - this is my foray into both a multi-chapter story and a crossover.

So, real quick before we begin and if you would be so kind as to give me a moment of your time. I want to say that this story was inspired by **Girl-Chama's Shortcutting Redemption**. It is by far the best Naruto/Avenger's crossover I have read on this site and more than just a well executed crossover it's a really fantastic read. With a solid and engaging writing style the story is an intriguing study into the interaction between characters and cultures. I highly recommend that if you haven't read it yet you should leave right now and go school yourself.

Even if that means not reading this first.

However, when you come back, please enjoy.

* * *

Sakura was reeling her chakra back from the _Strength of a Hundred_ seal, black marks retreating rapidly from around Obito's limbs into her own, as the first gush of acid hit the ground. Crouching down, she grabbed Obito just under his arms and kicked off as hard as she could, vaulting them up towards higher ground. She miscalculated his weight and wasn't quite able to dodge all of the downpour. Her arm screamed where her shirt had proved a poor armor, the sensation of her skin dissolving into agony.

Some acids can eat through flesh within seconds, she thought distantly in the part of her brain not firing off pain signals. It can take less than a minute to burn past fat, muscle, and even bone if left untreated or treated incorrectly.

They landed poorly, even with Obito trying to help right their course. They both hit the ground and scraped their way to a dusty halt. Sakura felt grit biting into the burning trenches still eating ever deeper into her arm. She struggled to her feet, stumbling, and tore off her vest, kicking it away. Her nails sunk into the seam of her right sleeve next and ripped the fabric free, shucking it to the side. She tried to assess her arm, but her entire body convulsed, limbs trembling in shock.

Sakura curled around her arm, reluctant to touch it, letting the instinct to protect the area overrule her medical training. She should already be treating herself, she thought, already be fixing what was broken. She managed to glance down the length of her limb and regretted it, because at least a moment ago she had had hope that she would be okay, had faith in the abilities that her master had given her. The flesh was damaged from her wrist up her forearm and across part of her bicep too, spattered in a pattern like paint might be flicked from a brush. The tattoo like marks of her seal made their final retreat to the rhombus on her forehead, pulling away any residual power and leaving her feeling hollow and incapable of movement. The release also took away the overbearing awareness of her cells and while the pain wasn't lessened, her tolerance for it grew as her body struggled to manage.

"Are you okay?"

"_...water.._.I need water..." her voice was high and desperate. She thought she sounded younger, like the twelve year old she had so adamantly tried to leave behind.

Obito touched his hip, but he didn't have his flask on him, stripped as he was to just a pair of standard issue trousers. He crouched down instead and slammed two fingers into the loose rust colored dirt. The ground hardened into rock and dipped into a smooth bowl. He performed another unknown technique, an odd twist of his fingers while whispering whatever it was too softly to hear. The air became instantly humid in the space of a breath and the bowl filled quickly, like magic. Sakura fell to her knees heavily, caps cracking, and splashed at her arm, again and again and again. And then had him refill it to start the process over.

During the past five years of her life she had been punched by arguably the strongest woman in the world, been impaled by a poisonous sword, and also had been the unfortunate recipient of Naruto claw-slapping her aside while transforming into the Kyubbi. In all these circumstances she had had the instantaneous satisfaction of instantaneous healing via chakra, whether her own or someone else's. Wounds were always painful, but there had always been an end in sight.

Acid was an entirely new world of medical discovery and as she assessed her available energy she saw no solution.

The water wasn't soothing as she thought it might have been. Each new handful splashed over her and irritated the already raw nerves as it rinsed away contaminants. She felt her stomach roil from the pain and mulishly she thought that it was a good thing she hadn't eaten anything besides soldier pills in the past two days. She chanced another look at the damage and only just managed to strangle an angry sob before it could be born. Her arm looked like it better belonged to an anatomical dummy.

_I don't have enough to spare for full treatment_, she thought,_ alternatively a patch job will scar it wrong and I'll lose full range of movement._

"Are you okay?" Obito asked, the words foreign on his tongue.

Sakura clenched her eyes shut for a long moment and worked at picking the lock on her jaw. She couldn't let them keep wasting time on this. They had to move forward. She had to do something. Or, do nothing.

"...Yeah. I'm - I'm okay...This is nothing." Her voice trembled, but she hoped she was the only one who could hear it.

"You're a medical ninja, right?" he murmured, "...let's wait till your wounds have healed." He shifted away from her, still crouching, to give her space and privacy. A weirdly kind gesture from what had been a man attempting world domination in the not too distant past.

Everything was so backwards now. She was alone in some sort of mad pocket dimension with an evil man (formerly?) - who was actually Kakashi's old teammate, who everyone thought was dead - and they were looking for Sasuke - her former teammate who apparently wanted to destroy Konohagakure (or rule it?) but was working on their side for the moment - who was in _another_ dimension, having been banished there by the sudden appearance of a bunny eared _bitch_ who seemed incredibly driven towards the singular goal of wiping every single shinobi off the face of the earth.

That wasn't even mentioning dealing with the resurrection of the dead, the disparate factions of several hidden villages and the samurai nation, once caught in age old rivalries and bitter feuds somehow coming together to form a united front, or the tragic deaths of friends and comrades. Hordes of monstrous clones. Demons made of chakra coming together and falling apart. The end of the world as she knew it.

Everything was so _wrong._

Sakura felt a nearly overwhelming urge to call out for her mother. A primal desire that she pinched between her lips and refused to even whisper. She allowed that ache to fill her chest for a moment and then released it, tasking herself to regather her wits.

_We can't afford to rest_, she thought, _we have to find Sasuke. Naruto needs Sasuke_. The world needed Sasuke. They couldn't win without both of them together. It had always been that way, they were at their strongest when together and her duty was to keep them that way for as long as she could. Like trying to force two opposite magnets together. They were lucky she'd been trained by the strongest woman in the world.

Sakura clutched the wrist of her injured arm and glared down at her reflection in the basin. She knew she didn't have the time or energy to heal anything, but she did have another option. Carefully she began deadening nerves, one by one. Death crept across her arm, her skin losing sensation in chunks, muscles going lax. Not death exactly though, more like dying, the moment of between life and death, held in suspension. The pain flexing its claws within the meat of her flesh began to dull to a deep intense ache. Killing off living cells and purposefully corrupting nerves came surprisingly easy to her, easier than learning to heal had ever been.

_I can't numb all the nerves_, she thought,_ something could go wrong and I wouldn't feel it. I can't turn off the circulation either if I'm going to use chakra...I'll have to grin and bear the rest of it._

From the vantage point of their new perch, they could make out more of the surrounding landscape. There were mountainous formations, made from curdled red stone, as far as she could see in every directions. This was an empty place filled with silence and the stench of sulfur.

The portal Obito sustained was closed, spinning hypnotically a dozen feet from them. The ground beneath it still giving off clouds of noxious gas. Obito was huffing softly where he slumped not far from her, the muted gasp of an animal resigned to death. His hair and skin had been bleached white, since the time he had housed the Ten-Tailed conglomeration. The only pigment he had was from his eyes and the blood that spilled like tears down his cheeks. He looked like a ghost with one foot already in the afterlife.

_I don't think he'll last much longer the way he is_, she thought,_ we have to hurry. Naruto is waiting._

Sakura reached out and clutched a damp hand around Obito's shoulder, pretending to herself that she wasn't also using the opportunity to lean against him in her exhaustion. She flushed chakra through his shoulder, easing the aches he was feeling and revitalizing his blood with oxygen. It was a simple technique, used mostly to help the elderly and asthmatics, that eased his inhalations and hopefully revitalized him enough to continue. She felt dizzy as she retracted the energy. Too sapped from what little chakra she had been forced to expend without the benefit of her seal.

_I need him to hold on_, she thought, _he has to survive until we get Sasuke back. After that... he can die._

"It's okay," she said, her voice insistent in between barely controlled gasps. "...We can't waste the chance we got from Naruto."

Obito was tense beneath her fingertips, "Why don't you heal your own wounds?"

"...My chakra has a limit," Sakura said, smirking dryly. "Let's keep going."

This man, Kakashi's teammate, looked up at her from the corner of his eye like he _knew her,_ knew everything about her. Maybe not the superficial things, like her favorite food or the name of her childhood pet, but her _core_ he understood.

"...You feel like you want to help him..." his mouth tugged just a little against the scars that whirled across half his face. She wasn't sure which 'he' Obito was talking about, it could have applied to a number of her precious people.

_I would do anything to help them. They're my teammates, my comrades, my family._

"I see," he said, almost a sigh. Sakura wasn't sure if he was reading her mind with his cursed eyes or if the _Strength of a Hundred_ seal, seeping from her skin to his, connected them in more ways than one, but he seemed to understand her intent and unwavering dedication. _They had to do this_. Sakura felt flush with the knowledge that this man was willing to die to save the world he'd once been so bent on ruling, that this act was his apology to his own teammates for his actions, the only thing he could do, that the tenacity he was expelling matched her own. She felt infected by the thought that she too would give up her life for the ultimate outcome.

"Yeah," he was smiling now, boyish almost, similar to the rare smiles Sasuke had granted Team seven in his youth. "_Let's do this_."

"_Alright!_" Sakura lifted her injured arm and pressed her palm into his other shoulder, rooting herself firmly and anchoring him to the ground.

Her task was to maintain the floodgate, keep the seal holding back her three years of chakra wide open. Obito drew the chakra out and controlled it himself, as if their networks were one and the same. His control wasn't as fine as hers and she had to help hone the transition between them. It was more of a mental exercise than anything else, an internal urging, directing the chakra towards him.

The portal flickered and reappeared before them, twisting open. The energy rushing out of her grew more demanding, the portal to this further dimension requiring more to remain open. Great dunes filled the circular window and hot gold sand began to pour free like an hourglass. In the very far distance there was a solitary figure, the one darkness in a land of sunlight.

"It's this one!" Obito shouted.

"Sasuke!" Sakura screamed at the same time, louder than him. "Over here! _Hurry_!"

Sasuke turned towards her, already running.

Sakura didn't need to see the portal beginning to shrink, she could feel the tide of her chakra ebbing under the strain to connect the two far reaching dimensions. Obito was bolstering the window with as much of his own chakra as he could, but he'd been mostly tapped from the last dimension they had investigated.

"...this is bad..." Obito choked out, portal whirling smaller and smaller, wavering insubstantially.

As fast as Sasuke was, Sakura knew with terrible clarity that they weren't going to be able to hold out, that he wasn't going to make it. Closing her eyes she dug deep into her seal, following the pathway down into the core of her chakra system, the sea of her chakra. She wasn't a Hyuga, but she could almost envision the overwhelming nothingness where her energy had been. Three years of scrimping and saving, gone. She felt like her insides could echo.

If I can just get Sasuke to this dimension, she thought, Kakashi could bridge the final gap. We just have to keep it open. Just. For. One. More. Minute.

She dug into the emptiness within her chest, scraping and praying to find anything that might keep the portal open, any hidden pocket or missing vein.

_Anything! Please! Anything!_

And then there was _something_.

What she found was not chakra. This energy filled her mouth with the taste of salt. _Life force_.

Life force was _thicker_ than chakra, if she had to describe it. It wound out of her slowly, reluctant to leave her body, as if asking _"Are you sure?"_

She pushed and pulled, bullying the power through the seal even as her body began to break down around her. Obito jolted at the addition of power, wrestling it into some usable form, his scars had started weeping blood, painting half his face crimson.

"_Sakura_..." the marks they shared glowed harsh and bright, white now instead of purple, as the portal dilated sharply, not meant to be held open by such means. It crackled at the edges, swelling out of Obito's control. He struggled to hold the door open as the technique mutated before them, almost with a life of its own.

"..._keep going_..." she ordered as previously healed wounds began to reappear across her body, phantoms from the past come to haunt her once more. She could feel the vitality leaching from her bones and she imagined that it must be what aging was like in rapid time, this was something not meant to be felt by humans all at once.

Pain lanced through her stomach and deep cut scored across her cheek - _Chiyo, is this what you felt when you brought back Gaara? -_ and bruises clouded her skin - _Tsunade really did know how to throw a punch_ \- blood ran in rivulets from her remaining sleeve and ran from her wrist down Obito's back - _Naruto didn't mean to hurt me, he wasn't in control. I forgave him. I'll always forgive him_ -

"..._just hold on_..."

Sasuke was a hundred yards away when he vanished and appeared on their side of the rip in space, having substituted himself for Sakura's soiled vest. Obito jerked around, breaking their connection through the seal even before Sasuke had landed on his feet. Sakura fell forward limply, eyes rolling around without control as the power snapped back at her like a rubber band almost stretched to it's breaking point. She was blinded by the light and deafened by the sound of the portal humming at unbearable volumes, screeching almost.

Obito caught her around the ribs before she could collapse fully. Sakura, jarred into consciousness, hooked her chin over his shoulder and stared at the portal in dread. The door had taken on an asymmetric shape, jagged at the edges, and it had grown four times its original size, the bottom half vanishing into the ground. Inside the portal the dimensions switched rapidly, cycling through more and more worlds. Worlds not within the rabbit woman's control.

Oceans full of ancient beasts. Deserts of purple sand. A city of gold and glass. Volcanoes spitting fire upon an ash filled wasteland. Endless fields of stars and an all consuming emptiness.

The portal folded, curling inward upon itself as if it had weight or substance, a slow falling giant.

Sakura reacted instantly, pushing forward and up. She slammed Obito to the ground, kicking one leg back. Her foot caught Sasuke square in the chest and he went flying, not expecting her explosive action. He crashed with little grace into the next mountain over.

_Safe. You're safe. You and Naruto are going to be safe._

Sasuke was shouting something she couldn't make out, she hoped it was her name, and running towards her and reaching for her.

This is the first time Sasuke has ever held out his hand to me. I guess I was finally useful to him./em

Sakura wasn't sure she had the energy to smile and even if she was able she couldn't feel her face, but she clutched at the sense of accomplishment, even as the terror of approaching death washed over her.

_Maybe this means I saved the world too, in my own way._

The portal roared down like a wave, swallowing Sakura, Obito, and half a mountain as it disappeared.

* * *

The office was cold, all flat surfaces and stainless steel. One wide window overlooked a grey ocean, so far below that the white outlines of waves seemed fixed in place.

"We're calling it seismic activity, our people are pretending to look for the cause, for the time being." A man fiddled with his cuff links. They were collectors items. Little red, white, and blue shields with a star at each center.

"...Is anyone actually going to believe that?" a woman asked, her voice dry without any obvious humor.

"I said '_for the time being_'."

"It's your job to make them believe it." A sharp voice cut into the conversation, deep and uncompromising.

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, sir. Sorry sir."

The woman sighed, "...Initial investigation says that there were two people found on top of the..._seismic activity._ They weren't recognized by any of the natives." A screen flickered to life, green text scrolling mid air. "We haven't gotten visuals yet, but it says they found a woman and a man. They were taken to a hospital near the Botswana reserve. Nine hundred clicks Northwest of our Johannesburg base."

"If they have something to do with the thousand ton stone that appeared overnight they need to be brought in."

"...Who should we send, sir?" the woman asked.

"I think Agent May as lead with a four man squad would be adequate for recon and detention." Her associate offered up, finally turning from where he'd been mutely contemplating the floor.

"The Cavalry? _Huh_. You look like you want to say something, Agent Hill?"

"Nothing, sir. She's certainly skilled enough to handle it."

"...Alright. Put the team together," a beleaguered sigh sliced through the room, "and I want constant contact. I've got a bad feeling about these two. The last time something dropped out of the sky it was a hammer and we all know how that turned out. Don't we, Coulson?"

"Yes, sir."

"Let's do our best to avoid a repeat of New Mexico."


	2. Chapter 2

So - second chapter - cool beans.

I thought while I have a moment I'd say that if you're looking for some good crossover stories you might want to check out Remnants of a Shinobi's Fire by ippus67. It's got great structure, a lot of cool fight scenes and an incredible sense of depth and mystery. If you're in the market, I'd check it out asap.

And when you're done with that...

* * *

"_Naruto,_" Sakura said, arms crossed, one eyebrow cocked, "how exactly did this happen?"

The blond haired boy stood before her, oozing syrup onto the entryway to her parents home. He reached up and tried to rub the back of his head, but his fingers got tangled in his hair. He'd let it grow out since the end of the war, it was almost as long has his father's had been, to the point that looking up at the fourth's face upon the Hokage's monument reminded her more of her teammate then of the legendary Kage. Someday, Naruto would be up there and she didn't think there would be much difference between the sculptures besides some whisker like scars carved into his cheeks.

"Well," Naturo said sheepishly, "I met Izumo and Kotetsu at the Jounin lounge and we were talking - but long version short we had this bet and you know how they can be - and ... you don't look like you want to know the details."

"_No. Please. Explain_."

"Aw, come on, Sakura-chan! I just need to borrow your bathroom!"

"No way! Go to a bathhouse!"

"They wouldn't let me in!"

"Go jump in a lake then." Sakura reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose, her forehead tight with exasperated affection. Naruto said something, but it sounded muffled and she wondered with amusement if he had tried to start licking the sappy mess clean. It would be just like him.

But that wasn't the case as she opened her eyes.

Naruto was blurred; a faceless, voiceless monster.

He spoke at her, a dark hole gaping in the swirling void where his face had been, gooey strands of flesh catching where there should be his kind mouth. There was a faraway sound, like she was hearing him after an explosion. A high tone rang through her head, echoing the horrific sound of a chidori in battle. The summer air began to grow hotter, suddenly stifling where it had once been balmy.

Sakura stepped back into her home. The walls were sagging around her, as if gravity was breaking apart every molecule and dragging the world downwards.

"What's happening?!"

The smudged figure that had been Naruto stepped in after her and reached out with indistinct limbs, the mockery of hands catching her by the throat. He said something again and again as he pushed her up against the disintegrating wall, it stretched back around her like a coffin while her family portrait melted into obscurity beside her head.

"_...hgggiiiihhh...hgggiiiihh...hgggiiiih..._!" The not-Naruto roared in her face. She could feel his breath, freezing in comparison to the world.

He was killing her. She was going to die. She couldn't breath.

"_...hgggiiihhh...hgggiiihhh...!_" She struggled in vain, lashing out with her feet and, scratching with her hands. Every blow she dealt felt like it was landing in clay, her skin catching against him.

Not-Naruto went silent as he slid her down to the floor, straddled her chest and squeezed both hands around her throat almost as hard as he could. The smeared face leaned down to her ear.

"._..die_."

He leaned all his weight on her and Sakura could hear her collarbones and spine splintering, feel the moment of hesitation as her throat reached it's point of breaking and began to collapse.

She tried to breath in and choked -

\- on a plastic tube that was being removed from her throat. The hard end brushed across the back of her tongue and Sakura gagged and turned her head, heaving dryly over the edge of a bed.

"_Maklik nou, maklik meisie._"

_...What?_

"_Hi daar . Hou net kalm . Weet jy waar jy is?_"

_...What?_

Her heart racing, Sakura reached out blindly and grasped onto starchy sheet that was tucked in around her legs. A light swung from side to side above her head, clearing away the darkness. She struggled to regain a footing in reality. Terror swept across her skin, leaving behind cold sweat and an army of goosebumps. Consciousness had brought along a new awareness of pain. Sakura felt sluggish with foreign painkillers that barely seemed to be doing their job. Her entire body still ached bitterly. Then again, she reasoned, she was pretty sure she'd been expecting to be dead, so maybe the pain was a good sign. Something to reassure her that she wasn't quite done yet.

She groaned, fighting to control her rolling eyes as she straightened from her twisted hunch. Her ribs heartily protested the movement, wringing another moan out of her.

"_Dit is die beste as jy nog steeds bly._" The light, which Sakura noted was actually a pen light, swept across her vision once more and then two hands came to rest on her shoulders and eased her back. Sakura surrendered herself to the cot, exhaling harshly as her roaming eyes focused onto the owner of the pen light.

It was a man, twice her age. Tall and on the thin side, dark skinned, carrying no visible weapons. The linen, flower printed shirt he wore hung off him where it didn't stick from patches of sweat. He didn't wear a medic armband, but there was a stethoscope hung around his neck, the clear plastic stained yellow around where it rested on his skin.

"_Kan jy my verstaan?_" He asked, or she assumed he asked, it sounded like a question, despite it being gibberish.

"Do you speak English?" He asked and Sakura's mind flickered with understanding.

The language wasn't called English to her, but she understood the tongue of Western folk well enough to answer him.

"Yes." Her voice croaked like an old woman. Like an old woman's who dined primarily on frogs. The man moved to her side and fiddled with a bag of saline that was attached to her arm intravenously. Her mouth filled with the taste of foreign metal, the ghost of salt. The man nodded to himself as he sat back onto a stool beside her bed and retrieved a clipboard that had been sitting on the small bedside table. Someone had left her flowers, a small bouquet of wilted, weedy looking buds, plucked too soon, she couldn't quite name them. She thought for a moment that it was a sign that Ino had been by her side and her heart swelled, until she noticed that the cots to either side of her had identical arrangements.

"Do you know where you are?" the man asked.

"...building of doctors?" Sakura guessed, taking in the room, unable to find better words. The ward she was in was one long shelter, coated roughly with flaking white paint that revealed it was built from cement blocks. Dozens of cots were lined up against the walls, filled with patients that doctors and nurses were talking to and treating.

Sakura had never seen so many people with dark skin in her life. She wondered if she was in a Kumogakure medical center. Wondered how she could have ended up there.

"Yes. This is a _hospital_. You were brought in last night." The man looked down at her with professionally distant sympathy, "You've been injured."

Sakura flicked her eyes down to her arms. Both of them were swaddled in crisp white bandages. She could feel the bulk of more gauze strapped around her torso, could feel the throbbing wound - that little souvenir from Sasori, bizarrely reopened.

I was sure I was dead, I used life force, I probably should be dead, she thought. While Sakura was glad to be alive, the questions of where, when, and why plagued her. Why had these particular wounds reopened? Why she was still alive? Who had saved her? And why had they saved her but not gotten her proper medical attention? Where was she? _What's going on, damn it!?_

She summoned chakra and cringed at the weak response, like digging for water in a desert. Still, it was there and for that she had to be thankful. She cycled through an inventory of her injuries while gently applying her chakra towards the worst part of her gut wound, working around rudimentary internal stitches, stitches made from some sort of fiber, not the standard chakra fused stitches she should have found. The sensation of her own healing was one of burning, new cells exploding into a existence within her as damaged cells were scorched away to make room.

As she dug a little deeper into examining herself she was appalled at the lack of any real treatment. What she had received could barely be counted as emergency field first aid. It was a miracle she was alive. Kumogakure jurisdiction or not, she was going to ball out whatever medic was botching up this operation, letting people be so under-treated. If she was this bad she could hardly imagine what care the other patients in this so called _'building of doctors_' were receiving.

"You were attacked by a man. We found him with you. Do you remember?"

Sakura startled and would have pinched herself is she could move her fingers. She'd forgotten the doctor was even sitting beside her.

_Man?_ She figured he must be talking about Obito Uchiha._ Is he alive too?_ _I thought for sure he was a goner._

She hadn't given it much thought in her supposed final moment, but she assumed he was dead. She was alive though and it seemed he was too, and that filled her with a sense of giddiness, because it meant that Naruto and Sasuke must have succeeded. She would be able to go home soon. To see her parents, and grieve for her fallen friends, and resume some sort of life. And if Obito was alive and somehow he managed to escape punishment for trying to destroy the world (_maybe her pain medication was effective because that was a crazy thought_) Kakashi might not be so gloomy anymore, having his long dead friend back. He'd have someone else to visit besides that lonesome grave, or maybe they would visit it together, or something. _Definitely the meds._

"Do not worry." The doctor interrupted her far-fetched fantasy, reaching out to hold her slightly less swaddled left hand warmly, "We have kept him locked up in another building. He will not hurt you anymore."

"...Hurt me?" she muttered, confused again.

"The authorities want to speak with you. They have been waiting until you were well enough to speak. I would like to get some basic information before they talk to you though."

_Authorities?_

"I..." Sakura scowled at the man. This whole situation seemed ridiculous in her opinion but luckily she knew the magic name to cut through bullshit, "Where is Tsunade?"

"Is that who he is?"

"What?"

"Is Tsunade the man who attacked you?"

"No, he didn't." Sakura's forehead creased, "He's not Tsunade."

"Okay, it's okay. We'll take this slow. What is your name?"

"...Sakura Haruno." Her name, she had thought, was well known too, she was fairly certain it wasn't just a narcissistic notion, but this man showed no recognition as he questioned her about the spelling. She wasn't able to help him and so he wrote her name across the form as best as he could.

"Where are you from?"

"_Where am I from...?_" a scream raked across her ears, coming from the other end of the ward and then the sound of something being dropped, metallic, a bed pan maybe, and then a scuffle, someone calling for assistance. The doctor stood up, setting his chart aside. He left without another word to go help whatever ailing creature needed his attention. Sakura flinched from the noise.

_What self respecting ninja would make such a racket?_ _It's probably one of those Samurai,_ she thought, _though really with this sort of medical care I can almost understand_. _I need to get out of here and send a message to Tsunade._ She couldn't believe she'd been so grossly misplaced. That was obviously what had happened, maybe this wasn't even a shinobi operation, maybe these were all just civilians. That made sense to her. These people didn't know who Tsunade was. Anyone who was involved in the war at least knew the names of the big players. She just needed to find a way to contact someone for help. Better not to explain to these people who she was, who knew how these particular civilians would treat a ninja in distress.

Sakura shifted under her sheets, pulling her legs free from the confining fabric. She turned slowly while sitting up, until she hunched over the side of the bed, legs swinging. She felt ready to topple. Her right arm was mostly numb, the skin pulled tight from where the acid had burned her. Scowling angrily, Sakura scooted forward and rocked onto her feet. The floor was cement, cool to the touch, a sharp contrast against the muggy air.

She was dressed in a loose cotton gown, that gaped open at her side, baring bandages and skin. She knotted it off roughly and hoped it held, though honestly, modesty was pretty far down her list at the moment. Sakura limped weakly towards the nearest door, which conveniently led directly outside into a weed filled yard. Other buildings were lined up at her sides, each marked with blue paint in a language she couldn't understand.

_Where's the communications site? Which one is it?_

She looked up searching for messenger hawks that might be coming or going. There was nothing though, just a empty blue sky yawning before her. The light seemed so different, the quality of it unlike anything she had seen.

"You're awake then...and where do you think your going?" Sakura whipped around to face a slight woman, pale skinned with familiarly arched features, all of which maintained a blank, unimpressed expression. She looked like someone Sakura might have passed on the street in Konoha. Not a civilian though, this woman was a warrior.

Sakura leaned against the door frame, fingers clutching the wood. The woman wore a dark jumpsuit that triggered Sakura to think 'uniform'. She had holsters on her hips and thighs. No common blades, just the small one tucked ever so sneakily at her thigh, a last resort weapon. Sakura assessed the strangely shaped chunks of black metal and plastic sitting in her kits instead of the standard kunai and shuriken.

"I ... the doctor told me to walk. For... circulation." Sakura explained, schooling her alert expression into a benign smile.

Instinct fired off inside her brain. Sakura did not recognize this soldier and the woman wore no identifying badge or mark, she was a danger, an obstacle. Who knew what sort things opportunistic people were doing post war. _Is she a bounty hunter?_

"That would be strange, as I gave him specific directives not to let you leave your bed or his sight after he woke you up."

Sakura shifted just a little, pressing up onto the balls of her feet.

_She's definitely a threat,_ Sakura thought, _the so called 'Authority' if I'm not mistaken._

"Who are you?" Sakura asked lightly, glancing at the nearest rock embedded at her feet, calculating how hard she would have to throw it to do any serious damage. If she could get to it fast enough. She would have to shut the woman up quickly if she wanted to have a chance to get out of here. _Who knows if there are more._

"I'm Agent May. I was sent to collect you and your associate and bring you under S.H.I.E.L.D's custody."

"...and if I choose to be... not collected?"

"We already have your friend in our custody."

Sakura flinched and pursed her mouth. _Obito._

"The doctors here think that he's the one that injured you. But you know what I think? I think he's your partner." Agent May shifted into one hip, a hand propped on her side, "I think he was trying to protect you when you came here with that rock. The way he was holding you."

"Rock?" Sakura said warily.

Agent May turned a little and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. Sakura glanced over and blinked rapidly at what she saw. In the far distance beyond rooftops and towards the dark edge of a forest, there was a mountain sitting like a blood stain against the horizon. A mountain made of curdled red stone, cut smooth on one side in a way that couldn't naturally have occurred.

Sakura's guts curled viciously within her and she felt all the warmth in the world seeping from her body as she remembered what she had been trying desperately not to think about.

_...the portal..._

She threw up onto the stone walkway, bones protesting the movement, throat burning. She didn't manage to miss her feet.

Agent May looked on without sympathy or reaction. She studied her the way Sakura used to study dead fish when she wasn't able to heal them.

"I think it's time you came along. There are some questions that need to be answered."

"No..." Sakura pulled herself up to her full height and stature with the help of the doorway.

_Nobody recognizes me_, she thought. _These people have only rudimentary medical capabilities._

_No,_ Sakura thought, _this isn't Konohagakure._ This wasn't Kumogakure. This wasn't even some backwater civilian village. It was a backwater civilian _dimension - world - whatever._

"It's best if you don't resist. For your own sake." The woman raised her hand into the air and flicked two fingers. Sakura flinched, trained to expect a jutsu or a weapon. Instead she just heard the sound of shoes behind her. Heavy boots, and a rhythmic metallic clicking.

She turned and saw two men approaching down the ward at a threatening pace. They wore uniforms of thicker material than Agent May's, less streamlined, and padded vests as well. They carried heavy metal machines in their arms, similar to the things Agent May carried in her holsters, but larger, longer, thicker. Sakura thought that the machines looked vaguely familiar to rifles, but not made of wood and missing the contraption that ignited the force to throw the internal projectiles. Something to keep an eye on, because whatever they were, these people held them like weapons.

Patients and medical workers scattered like mice, eager to be out of the soldier's wake.

Agent May stepped forward and two other uniformed men jogged over to flank her side.

Sakura did not like this. She did not like any of this. The hair on the back of her neck prickled as her shoulder blades arched up like hackles. She could hear Tsunade so clearly in her ears then. _You're a medic, you evade. You keep out of the fight. Except for when you can't. Create a diversion, hide, attack with stealth, not brute force. Be a shinobi until you can be a medic again._

She raised her foot subtly and then without fanfare slammed her heel into the concrete. _Hard_. The floor made a wrenching sound as it burst like an overripe fruit. A rough seam shot down the length of the long room, gaping with rebar teeth and churning stones. She tore at her bandaged hands, freeing her fingers so she could catch pieces of the flying rubble.

The men, other agents of the organization that the woman belonged to Sakura deduced, threw themselves aside to avoid the destruction, only barely managing to escape falling into the newly wrought crevasse.

People screamed and scrambled blindly through the dust that filled the air. They spilled from the exits, some jumping through the windows to get away. Sakura darted into the cloud, using it as cover, using the people as a distraction. _Where's your medic's oath now?_ Something in her whispered snidely. Back in her own dimension, Sakura figured grimly, where it might have to stay for the time being. Caring about these people was a luxury she couldn't afford.

She pushed passed a nurse huddled around a young boy. The nurse screamed when she saw her and Sakura heard a terrible cracking noise and felt something small and hard whistle past her ear. She turned violently and chucked her handful of pebbles, hearing the satisfying crack of stone on at least one skull before she threw herself to the ground painfully. Sakura crawled beneath the nearest bed listening as the men shot at her again, short bursts of light flaring from within the chaos.

"Stop it! Hold your fire! You'll hit civilians!" Agent May's voice was doubled. Sakura could hear her shouting from outside and she could hear the voice coming from a little radio speaker. A speaker that wasn't more than a yard away.

Reaching out, Sakura wrapped her hand around an ankle and pulled. The man fell forward, catching his chin on the floor, stunned briefly. Sakura crawled over his back and without giving him a chance to struggle she slammed a knuckle into his temple. He slumped, boneless without another noise.

Two down, she thought, and...how many were left? Were there more on their way?

Thick fingers wrapped in her hair at the back of her scalp, tightening cruelly before they pulled so hard that she was dragged off the man she had just taken down. Sakura writhed, reaching up behind her to claw at her assailant, ribs protesting, but her nails only dug into protective gloves and a thick sleeve. He shook her hard, like a child having a fit with a doll, her neck popped and creaked. He was successful in keeping her grasping hands from getting a hold of his wrist and turning it to pulp.

"I got her! I got her!" her captor was shouting, sounding far too happy at his accomplishment, it was never a good sign when a soldier spoke with that particular kind of pleasure.

Her hands fell as he dragged her from the building, back into the open sunlight where the dust was just beginning to settle. She twisted, feet kicking out uselessly. He had a knife tucked into his boot, the handle made of ridges of dull rubber. She gripped the hilt behind her back, pulled it free, and savagely stabbed him in the back of the knee three times in quick succession.

"Son of a bitch!"

He screamed and released her, staggering to the ground in a sprawl. Sakura shifted around to his back and jammed the knife up against his throat just as Agent May and her two other men aimed their strange weapons at her. One of them seemed unsteady on his feet, blood trickling down his temple. The man in her arms was groaning and in the distance she could hear the civilian's panicking still. Besides that there was silence, emptiness. An impasse.

"It doesn't have to be this way," Agent May said. "Put down the weapon and we can discuss this."

"No. Leave me alone. I do not want to speak with you."

Agent May's mouth turned sour. She lowered her weapon and turned away. Sakura looked warily after her, clutching the whimpering man tighter.

Agent May said something into a radio that rested in her ear. This time it was not broadcast over the other radio's as well, Sakura could only hear silence from her hostage's ear piece. He tried to say something and she mashed his face into the dirt to silence him. The dark haired woman spoke again, waited, and spoke once more. Then she turned and strode back, stowing her weapon away nonchalantly.

"I told you before." Agent May said.

"Told me what?" Sakura asked.

"I have a someone with your friend right now. I will not hesitate to put a bullet in his brain if you don't surrender and comply. I will not have you endanger anymore lives today."

_Obito,_ she thought. _Damn it_.

"What if... you are wrong?" Sakura asked, "What if he is not my friend. What if he is...civilian. Or my enemy. Why should I care? I could kill this man here too."

"I'm willing to bet."

"You said you did not want to endanger any lives. If I did care, how do I know you really do have that man anyways?"

"I'm willing to bet," Agent May repeated, her voice like ice, "and I'm done negotiating."

She reached up to press the button on her radio.

All she could think was _No. No. No._ She needed him. He was her last connection.

"Code 4, you have a go -"

_I have to stop her,_ Sakura's mind raced. If she threw the knife she could take out the nearest man standing between her and the woman, but she couldn't run fast enough to make it to her in time to silence her order. By the time she got there Obito would be -

"_Yamete!_" Sakura shouted, and then, "Stop! Stop, please..."

"Hold your fire. Code 4 canceled."

Sakura scooted back from her hostage and raised her hands slowly, dropping the knife to the ground with a thump. She shuffled onto her knees and locked her fingers behind her head. Agent May and her teammates approached, weapons still aimed and ready.

"Bring the SBX-90 cuffs," Agent May said into her radio. "Put a pair on the other one too."

Sakura glared at the ground mutely, trying to wrangle back a helpless rage that filled her chest.

A moment later a woman jogged up, clad in a uniform different from the rest, a tiny pin on her chest with two small wings on it. She handed off a heavy pair of shackles. Agent May did the honors.

Sakura couldn't see what was happening to her hands behind her back, but she could feel the restraints tighten snugly around her wrists by themselves, humming with some sort of energy. She tested them, pulling gently and received a blood curdling jolt of energy that zinged up and down her arms and made her jaw ache.

"I'd recommend not doing that again. It gets worse each time you try it."

Sakura slumped forward, the manacles the only thing keeping her from falling face first into the dirt.

"Load her up. We're returning to base." Agent May said, stepping around Sakura's body. "ETD in ten."

Sakura choked on wretched sounding sobs. She'd bitten her tongue, blood and spit drooled through her stained teeth to dot the ground. She felt herself crying, a physical reaction to the spike of electricity more than anything else. The shock seemed to bounce between her nerves, jangling everything so badly that she couldn't stop shaking.

"Looks like the cuffs work pretty well, huh?" one of the men said, gripping her forearms and dragging Sakura to her feet.

"Stark'll be happy to hear it." Another man muttered, prodding Sakura in the ribs with the long end of his weapon, "not that he needs the ego boost."

They took her to a squatting metal hut with a massive propeller attached to it's top, or maybe it was a strange antenna. Once inside, they chained her to a chair, keeping her arms pinned behind her. Had she been in her usual gear she would have already fished her hidden senbon out of the lining of her apron and begun work on dismantling her cuffs. Even strange electric ones must surely have need for a key.

Sakura noticed quickly that Agent May hadn't been bluffing. Obito was strapped onto a gurney on the floor at Sakura's feet, wearing matching cuffs, unconscious to the new world. She almost envied him.

They loaded on the man she had knocked out on another gurney and helped the man with the dripping head wound strap in, giving him a wad of gauze to hold to his skull. He caught her eye and gave her a slightly scared look. Like she was some sort of monster. His face was soon obscured though as the man she had stabbed fell into a seat just in front of her. His leg was wrapped with rudimentary bandages and splinted as well with some sort of semi-flexible plastic rod. With distant medical curiosity, Sakura wondered if she'd managed to cut a tendon.

He glared at her darkly, looked around to make sure he wasn't being watched, and then leaned in close. Sakura could feel the moisture of his breath on her face, the smell, the _stench_ of old smoke and rotting lung tissue.

"They're gonna cut you up when we get back to base." He whispered, his voice low and ugly, "They'll split your chest open and dig out your heart."

He wanted to scare her, like she was a little girl.

Sakura spat a mouthful of blood at him.

"_You little bitch_!" He lunged up unsteadily but didn't make it far.

"That's enough." Agent May was there, one of her uniformed associates holding the man back, "Move him to the front."

She turned her cool gaze back onto Sakura, "I would stop causing so much trouble, if I were you."

Sakura said nothing.

"For your friends sake, then." Agent May walked away, down the narrow aisle.

Sakura looked down onto Obito's pale face and glowered. His eyes had been wrapped with gauze along with half his face, probably because they thought something was wrong with them. Sakura remembered the trails of blood from before, the way his scars had cracked open, a side effect from usage. She prayed that he had turned off his bloodline abilities, if he was even able to. She didn't want to know what these people would do with that sort of power if they stumbled upon it.

_They're gonna cut you up..._

Sakura sunk back into her seat as much as her bowed arms would allow.

_Let them try_, she thought,_ I'll tear them apart first._

As far as she had seen, these people lacked true power, none of them had used any shinobi arts during their scuffle. All they had was their strange weapons and rudimentary threats. Once Obito was able to fight there would be nothing standing in the way of escape. She was fairly sure that she could strike a partnership with him, at least until they got home.

Her seat began to shake violently and Sakura shifted to stare out a small circular window as her prison began to roar and lift into the air. This heavy hunk of metal was flying. _The building is flying!_

_Flying._

The red mountain grew as they passed by and then shrank behind them.

_Strange weapons, rudimentary threats, and unknown levels of technological advances._

Sakura looked back to Obito as the new world scrolled by beneath her.

_Wake up._

_Wake up._

_Please, wake up..._


	3. Chapter 3

Hey-O...

Go read **Permission to Castrate** Please, by **PureWaterLily**. I honestly don't enjoy Twilight and therefore never really read any the fanfiction it produced, but this story was recommended to me and despite some if it not being my bag, it was ridiculous and dry all at the same time. A really funny read from a talented writer, please go look at it now.

When you're done with that...

* * *

There was one light in the interrogation room - she was under no delusion that it wasn't an interrogation room - and it threw off a dim clinical light that didn't quite dispel all the shadows. Sakura sat slumped in a chair on one side of a table, her head hung. Greasy chunks of her hair were doing little to hide her slackened expression. Across from her sat the third agent sent to question her in the last forty eight hours. Sleep deprivation was fortunately the worst that they had inflicted upon her so far - well, that and a bunch of boring questions repeated over and over, half of which she didn't understand because of the language barrier or because they were mentioning names of people and places she didn't know.

_Asgardians_. Something about a Hammer, capital H. _What sort of name is Thor?_ It sounded like it belonged to one of those professional wrestlers she liked to read about.

They wanted to know what her home was like, who she was, who her family was, what her race was like, how she was so strong. On and on they asked about things she couldn't or refused to answer. She watched every one of them wondering which one was going to turn her into the next Ibiki. _Remain vigilent, aware, look for a way out. Any little detail might help._

The man before her now was dressed in an immaculate but modest suit of western design. He had a tray like device in front of him, with a screen filled with information she couldn't decipher much of from her angle. It was similar to the computers she had back home, or at least somewhat distantly related. The monstrosity back at the hospital in Konohagakure that kept all of the patient files and schedules was a nightmare to work with and only a few select staff members had taken to wrangling them. She would bet he was reading over the transcripts of her earlier discussions with the other two agents. A fruitless novel of a one sided conversation. Finally he looked up and smiled at her congenially, tapping the screen of the device once. It flickered into darkness, leaving behind a black mirror that reflected the light above.

Sakura warily watched him from beneath her bangs as he reached towards her, but his hand stopped midway and simply pressed a switch that controlled the recording device embedded in the middle of the table. A little red light shut off on its side. Oh, sure, of course that would be the only bug in the room, the obvious one in the middle of the table. Did he think she was an amateur?

"That's better."

Sakura felt tension pull taut through each of her limbs. It was statistically a bad sign that he didn't want to record his interrogation. His tone had indicated an 'I'm going to be your ally in this mess' sort of tactic, but his actions were anything but reassuring.

"You must be worn out, it's been a busy day for you, hasn't it?" He gave her a moment, leaning back in his chair, getting comfortable. Had he been a doctor, she thought his bedside manner would have curbed the most unruly of people. Inoffensive, not too deep, not too high pitched, slightly slower tempo to his speech to ensure attention and reflect that he was a good listener.

Sakura mutely flexed her hands in her lap. They had switched those awful manacles out for similarly electronic laced chains. The word Stark was printed on these ones too. She coudn't write things very accurately, however the brevity of the name and the leaning S at the beginning she was familiar with, enough that she recognized it as a name, as a person. She wondered what sort of evil bastard built these sorts of things.

At least they didn't shock her into a seizure every time she stretched, they simply started beeping at an increasing rate if she moved around for a prolonged period of time. She wasn't quite sure what would happen if the beeping reached a crescendo. No one had told her and she debated frequently in her mind how much she should test it.

Sakura wished for nothing more than to tear her arms free and smash through the nearest wall. She could feel her charka growing with every agonizing moment that passed, but it was disturbingly taking much longer that it usually did to replenish itself. The truly terrible thing was that there were too many variables at play to discover the reason for her slower recovery. Was it just because of the extent of her injuries or was it that the air in this world was not as rich in nature chakra as her own?

"You're name - it's Sakura, right?"

Sakura peeked up from her lap, nobody else had said her name, but they hadn't asked for it either. _How does he know?_

"You told a doctor, back at the hospital." His smile showed just enough teeth to be friendly and just few enough not to be on the mild mannered side of threatening. "I'm Phil Coulson. Please just call me Phil."

_Is he supposed to be good cop?_

"How did you get hurt?" he asked conversationally, and when she didn't respond he carried on as if he didn't mind her silence one bit, "some of our doctors here are guessing at the causes, but you have conflicting wounds. You seem to be healing quickly though, not surprising I guess, what with you being an alien. Is that common for your people?"

_Alien._ Sakura struggled with both a scowl and a choked laugh. _I'm an alien,_ she thought, reveling in her new title.

"You want to know what I think, Sakura?" He waited a second and then sighed, "I think that you don't know what's going on. I think you ended up here and are just as confused as we are. So - I propose a deal. I'll answer some questions for you and you answer some questions for me. I'll tell you the truth if you do the same. Scouts honor."

Sakura didn't know what a scout was, but it was nice to hear that the concept of honor existed. There was a lot of room for differences and misunderstandings, but this world seemed eerily similar to her own homeland. Alien didn't quite seemed the right word. Foreign, perhaps.

"What do you want to know?" Sakura asked.

He drew in a measured breath, "How about you introduce yourself first."

"You know my name. Sakura. Sakura Haruno. I'm -" she stopped, considered what to tell him, what would entice him to honor his side of this deal. Useless information that he might deem interesting? "- I'm sixteen -and a half - I like sour food, I hate spicy things, I don't feel like sharing my hobbies and my dreams are none of your business." Kakashi faded in and our of her minds eye like a photograph just being developed. Her heart constricted off beat. _Please be safe._

Something tensed between the man's eyebrows that she couldn't quite read. She wasn't sure what part of her little monologue had tripped something like empathy in his gaze. She didn't like it.

Sakura lifted her head so she could glare, as if that would force him to uphold his promise of honesty, "Where is my - my friend?" Could he even be called that? Was Obito good now? She hadn't had the time to philosophize over his redemption, much less discover her own feelings on the matter. For now, she needed him, he could open the portal again, together they could go home and then his fate was his own.

"...He's being held in one of our medical facilities," his voice was steady, "he hasn't woken up yet. He's in a coma. He's not in danger."

Sakura chewed on that bit of information moodily. If she could see Obito, touch him for a moment, maybe she could figure out what was wrong and fix him. Though at the moment it didn't seem likely that they were gonna let her see him anytime soon. Were the tables turned, she certainly wouldn't. They had leverage of the worst kind, and they probably didn't know how bad it even was.

"Why did you come here?" Coulson asked.

"Not my choice," Sakura snapped. What was it called, issue? Problem? No. "An accident. An accident sent us here."

"I see." His tone was non-judgmental, his expression unfazed, "So, you have no intentions of invading."

Sakura had nothing to say to that, she simply shook her head tiredly. _Invasion, how ridiculous. We have enough problems back home as it is._

"I've been talking to my boss about you, trying to figure out a solution for your appearance. You attacked several of our agents -"

"They attacked first," Sakura huffed angrily, "would you not protect yourself?"

"I understand, please calm down." Her chains were beeping as she unconsciously strained against them, whining higher and higher. She relaxed her wrists back into her lap and moodily waited for them to whir to a muted hum.

"Your turn." He offered as a peaceful gesture. Sakura slumped back into her seat, she had questions, too many questions and not enough energy to sort them into a hierarchy.

One of them managed to break from the chaos, "Why haven't you killed me?"

"Despite your first impression of our organization, we're not wasteful. If you had let me finish before - you attacked several of our agents... using unknown abilities that could be seen as incredibly useful in light of a different circumstance." He was smiling again, "You are potentially very useful to S.H.I.E.L.D. and that is why we're questioning you this way instead of the other way. Not to mention we don't know who you are to others of your kind."

_Oh._

"Evidence points to your claims being true. It does seem like you had no intention of being here, that your arrival was accidental and that you have no ill intentions towards our planet. You're arrival is also coincidental. Your particular set of skills are something we've been looking for, an answer to a potential problem we've had. We've gone over the footage and the files on you and my boss has reached a conclusion. An agreement if you will, we'd like your assistance in return for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s."

"You want to... hire me?" Sakura wondered if that technically made her a defecting nin, taking a mission outside of village sanction. She hadn't expected the conversation to take a sudden turn towards business and wasn't sure how to respond.

"I guess you could put it that way."

"And you won't kill me?"

"We generally don't kill assets."

Mulishly she looked at the table top. These people seemed like they had a strong military force, if only because of their equipment, and it was usually a good idea to align oneself with the largest power in times of uncertainty. She figured she could handle whatever they threw her into, or die trying, and it wasn't like she couldn't be plotting to escape in the meantime. What was important to know was if they could help her.

"How would you assist me? Your people have technology beyond what I - that is, it is greater than I have known. Could it - do you know if it could send me home?" Sakura asked, heart in her throat.

"Of course. I'm positive that we're your best shot of going home. If the tech isn't in the works now you can be assured it will be by tonight."

_Does that mean that I have to be worried that you're gonna try and take over my world?_ Sakura wondered. Tsunade wasn't going to like it if she brought back an invasion.

"What would be expected of me?" She asked instead. Years of working with Tsunade watching her broker mission deals came to mind. Her tone became subtly more professional, acquiescing, and yet her gaze more scrutinizing.

"You'd execute missions assigned by us, you seem trained, so I'm assuming you won't have any issued with that. You would essentially be a contracted freelancer working for S.H.I.E.L.D. put on assignments that we think best utilize your abilities."

"...Obito?"

"We will take care of him as well and in the event that he wakes up and he's half as useful as I suspect you're going to be, we'll offer him the same deal."

Sakura didn't know Obito well enough to know what his reaction would be to such a deal, but she had an inkling he wouldn't like it. She also had an inkling that these people might not like Obito's personality. What she remembered of her interactions with the man swung from one extreme of childishness to chilling megalomania, to a semi-thoughtful teammate.

"When can I see him?"

"Unfortunately, not for a little while. I'm sorry, sincerely, but to be blunt we need a bargaining chip in the event that our partnership doesn't fulfill its potential. We have to firm some details up, if you will."

_Of course._ She simmered internally for a moment, before nodding, "I agree to these terms, but you're people must show me the way to go home, proof that you can do it."

"Perfect. Then we have some more questions and some tests to run and some contracts to sign. Now that we're friends, I'm hoping you'll be willing to cooperate."

"Whose turn to ask a question?" Sakura asked.

_This is the best position to be in right now,_ she thought sagely, _make them think I'm their tool, become useful, earn their trust_. Even if she broke out of her chains, managed to escape whatever holding facility she was in and maybe get Obito out too, they would just hunt her down. They knew their own world better than she did. She needed more information, needed to buy some time. If she had to use the money they paid her, so be it.

"My turn," Coulson said, and then mercifully asked, "Are you hungry?"

"Yes." Sakura said, unable to pinpoint the last time she had eaten anything substantial, it felt like weeks. Her entire body ached for nutrients. Apparently not eating and the using ones life force inappropriately left a body so malnourished she felt likely to splinter into a pile. When she got home, she'd write a paper on it. She lifted her shackled hands up and waited.

He produced a slim disk from his pocket and hovered it over her bindings. There was a tense moment as she was freed. Agent Coulson's hand retracted and hovered over the poorly hidden weapon bulging at his hip from beneath his jacket.

The chains slithered to the ground with a clatter. Sakura flexed her fists and wrists and then smiled sweetly at the man. Tilting her head thoughtfully she asked, "Does this world have... fish?" She fluttered her fingers by her neck, imitating fins. Silly and young, let them see her as easily manipulated. Let them not see her as a thinking woman, as a strategist, a shinobi. Let them think she was just a lost little girl.

Phil smiled kindly and led her out of the dim room into a glowing hall, the lights here fractionally warmer then the one in he previous cell. Sakura followed dutifully, hands tucked behind her back, her footsteps so light that not a soul could hear them.

_A large amount of loud enemies is the friend of the shinobi._

_Hide and remain silent._

_A shinobi must understand the proper time, when the enemy is tired and ill prepared._


	4. Chapter 4

You a fan of crossovers? You like a _specific_ sort of story? A specific character? Well, whatever, go read **The Chakra Alchemist **by **Miss Comatose**, if you haven't already. It's intriguing and emotionally wrought and very well written. Really I just want you all to suffer with me as we sit idly on its' cliff.

Sorry, enough chit chat, when you're done enjoying her story, and you happen to find yourself back in this neighborhood...

* * *

Time passed a little differently in this world. She hadn't noticed it at first, so subtle, unspoken. But every one of Earth's seconds lasted a quarter more than the seconds back home. Everything seemed a little slower, slightly out of focus with time. She had a calendar pinned to her wall - frolicking kittens - that she used to watch her time, chosen over attempting to use any of the infernal gadgetry S.H.I.E.L.D. tried to foist upon her. Her calendar had 35 days crossed out with small red X's. So she had been here, at the base, for 35 days and before that she had been out in the world for the equivalent of 2 days before they had retrieved her. so that made 37, plus the two days spent interrogating her. 39. Plus the extra quarter seconds. Almost 49 days.

50 days was usually when the village started drawing up papers. Missing Nin. Defector. Presumed Dead.

_Maybe there's a grace period, an extension because of the war. They have to know I'm trying, I'm going to get home eventually, it's just taking more hard work than usual._

Now wasn't really the time to be thinking about it though. Sakura crawled on her belly, slinking on fingers and toes, chakra burning fastidiously from her fingerprints. She stopped once she reached the chandelier and looked down to the floor below. A snore erupted from a mound of fine linens. A man of considerably girth and wealth slept unaware of the sword above his head.

_What would you be willing to do to go home?_

_What skills do you have?_

_What do you bring to the table?_

_What was I willing to share..._

Sakura flicked a senbon down and heard another snore choke up mid breath, catch, and then wheeze away. She coiled a strand of fine wire around her hand, rotating her wrist to reel the needle back. Sticking her lower back to the ceiling, She tucked away her weapons, and pulled free a small tool kit, freeing a screwdriver from it's band. Genlty she loosened all the screws holding canopy cover in place, and reached inside to jerk the light fixture off of it's electrical box. Bits of plaster rained down onto the dead man, and Sakura left the heavy light fixture hanging by the frail wires that powered it.

She scooted over to the wall beside the door, and perched at it. The chandelier creaked ominously, and held out for one long moment before giving in to gravity. The wires disconnected and the heavy iron ring, fell onto the dead man's head, with a distinct squelch, and then tumbled off the bed and hit the floor loudly. Perfectly.

The door swung open and the room filled with men shouting in a language Sakura didn't know. She crawled out of the door, headed down a set of stairs. When crawling on the ceiling no longer benefited her she slid along the shadows on the wall. Alarms were sounding, old bells being run and a fog horn turned siren. Men shouted, dogs barked. _A little paranoid for what was obviously an accident._

She frowned to herself as she crept towards a window, looking outside quickly towards the dense forest of short pines. Charlie, her _handler _was supposed to signal her, to let her know what position they had moved to. A voice shouted from outside, foreign and triumphant and furious. _Something's wrong._ While the middle aged man that acted as her liaison was not her favorite person in the world, he wasn't incompetent. Sakura glanced around her surroundings and then headed for a door that emitted a soft glow, she opened it softly and found an old woman inside, asleep on a chair where she had been washing a small bin of socks. Wasting no time, Sakura struck out, knocking her out deftly, leaning her back in her chair. She made quick work of stripping the woman of her robe and head scarf.

The woman was frail underneath her cloth, small and vulnerable like a baby bird, bald and pink. Sakura took the few moments to cover her with one of the tablecloth's stacked in the nearby linen closet.

Walking as quick as she dared in her disguise, Sakura crept towards the main gate and the shouting. The main doors to the fort had been thrown wide open and it appeared that the entire house was awake and present. She skirted the crowd to the left and saw a thin spot, just in time to see Charlie hit in the face. A meaty sound, some of his teeth gave way and Sakura saw him choke on them.

_Damn it. He must have gotten too close._

_"Myslel sis mohl__ běžet?!"_ Charlie's attacker shouted over and over, with each swipe. How could she do this without blowing her cover? It was supposed to be an accident, that was her job. Scowling she lifted the hem of her stolen robes and pushed her way through the crowd.

"_Ne!Ne!Ne!"_ She shouted, about the extent of her capabilities with the language. She repeated it several times, flinging herself over Charlie's beaten body. Her hands grasping his lapels, she brushed his skin and sunk into assessing his wounds. Not life threatening, but definitely debilitating. If she healed him...

Scowling to herself, Sakura grasped the small button in her pocket and pressed down. Insurance policy. The fort behind the crowd erupted into flames, the stones of the ancient building seeming to hiccup in the air before settling uncomfortably back into a caricature of their former arrangement.

People screamed as they watched the fort wobble indecisively. As fire roared through anything worth devouring. As their lives and their dreams vanished from the push of a button they had never seen. Sakura stripped off the old woman's robe and scooped her partner up onto her shoulders. He groaned piteously. She'd accidentally stepped on the stolen headscarf as she shifted Charlie's weight.

_Probably dead. _

Turning, Sakura hightailed it towards the fence, launching herself well ahead of time, landing briefly atop one of the tall fence's point before vanishing into the forest. She fumbled with the ear piece dangling from Charlie's ear, noting the blood trickling out with mild concern. She lifted in and heard a garbled mess of several people trying to communicate on one line.

_Something is very wrong. Something bad has happened._

"I need evacuation, agent down. Over." She called.

"I repeat, I need evacuation, I have an agent down. Over."

The radio went silent, no static or crackle of unreliable radio frequencies. These were beyond such paltry tech. The silence was troubling though, as was the tense moments between her call and their response. Someone switched her call to a private channel and finally spoke.

"Request confirmed. Keep heading south. Escort and a med team will be there in twenty. Over." The man on the other end sounded professional enough, but she caught the hint of something, disbelief or shock. _At me?_ She wasn't sure.

It would take her five minutes to reach the rendezvous. The next fifteen were spent hovering over Charlie's body, watching as he scrabbled to hold onto his life. She would watch and she would soothe and she would hold his hand and make sure no more teeth came loose for him to swallow.

But she wouldn't heal him. That wasn't the deal, and she couldn't.

"I'm sorry. I so sorry."

* * *

Phil found her in her new room, holding a red pen and contemplating a new calendar - this time stumbling puppies - he was glad she actually used it. He'd only meant it as a joke when he'd slipped the first one into her sign-on crate. This one was just to replace the one that had very likely not survived the collapse of the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. base. She had today's date circled. She hadn't set anything else up in her temporary room. Just the calendar.

"What's today? Is it your birthday?"

"Nothing special," Sakura murmured softly, uncapping the pen with her thumb and then clicking it back into place. Again. Again. Again.

"It's not your fault, about Charlie."

She said nothing, but her face, so young and hard, toughened a little more. She looked at him then with an exhaustion common in soldier's oversea. It was usually called homesickness, but it was far more serious than such a mundane moniker.

"Have we made any progress locating Dr. Selvig or the Tesseract? Was he making any progress before...?"

Phil thought that probably Dr. Selvig was making plenty of progress after his untimely departure, but using any of it for their own benefit was unlikely as the man was currently being controlled by an invading God.

"Don't you want to know how Charlie is?" He detoured.

"How is Obito?" she asked instead.

Also not a good thing to talk about. So many secrets in his organization. Some of them seemed feel heavier each day.

"No change, I'm afraid." Phil said softly.

"If you'd just let me see him for a moment I could...It might be something you don't even think to look for. I know we're similar, but we're still different beings. You don't know. If you just let me..."

She trailed off with a weariness that seemed genuine. She had been an unrelenting force of energy since she had arrived, eager to learn where to step and where to avoid, what manners she needed, who everyone was, how to work with them, how to be useful. Like a train forging ahead on one track.

"I'm sorry, Sakura."

She wanted to say that it wasn't good enough, but Phil Coulson was one of the few people she could put any trust in at all. She could trust that while his intentions were always focused on his work, he was also a good person. He cared to what extend he was able, and never lied about what he could and could not talk to her about. She believed that, or at least she really wanted to.

"Charlie's fine, by the way. A bit young for implants, but I think he's coming around to them. He ate his first solid food today."

"He shouldn't have gotten so close." Sakura said.

"No, he shouldn't have. He thought he had to evacuate because of the attack on the base, there was too much misinformation on the channels and he didn't factor in the patrolling guards. That's on him and his consequence is set. He's grateful though, if it means anything to you. You saved him."

_Barely._

"What's next? How are we gonna get the Doctor back? Get the Tesseract back?" Her only way home they said, the only way.

Phil smiled a little sadly at the young woman. For a moment he wondered how this would all play out, if Fury's gambles and ploys would pay off. Sakura had a learned patience about her, but he was under no illusion that beneath her control and her watchful eyes and her polite nature that she would tear apart their world with her bare hands if she thought it meant she could go home. A single-minded intent was lodged deep in her and while he couldn't guess at all the circumstances, he understood the drive.

She seemed to take his smile wrong, because she stood up from her bed and started pacing like a caged animal.

"Haven't I done enough? Haven't I proven myself yet? When are you all going to take me seriously?" She came to a stop and jammed herself back into the wall, scowling at her bare feet. "Just tell me what's going on. I can help. I can find Selvig. I can get the Tesseract back. Just help me by telling me what you know."

"We're assembling a team."

"What?" caught off guard, she straightened from her slight slouch, "A team? And you...you want me on it?" she asked, buoying up from her brooding attitude.

"We're going to _need_ you on it. Do you remember when I told you that your abilities, your style of evasion and your...uncommon strength could serve a very particular role for us?"

"I remember." _Like it was yesterday._

"It's time for you to take that on. I'm sending you to meet up with Agent Romanoff. We're bringing the Good Doctor in."

Sakura blinked at him, "The Big Guy?"

"The Big Guy."

"Phil...tell me who stole the Tesseract, why is he so dangerous that you'd be willing to bring Banner on board _this_ ship?"

"It's not just him, Sakura. It's him and Selvig and Barton and McNear and Owens, all of their knowledge about us, not to mention he has the Tesseract. We're not sure what he even wants to do with it."

"But...who is _he_?"

"...Trouble."

* * *

Natasha Romanoff would have been the best Kunoichi in history, had she grown up in Konohagakure, or any of the Hidden villages. Sakura admired the woman's poise and deftness. Her strength tempered by cultivated beauty. A sharp wit, a soft mouth. She was an amazing shot and fantastic at hand to hand combat, all long limbs and acrobatic panache that was both brilliantly executed with style yet never seemed excessive. Sakura, while well trained in evasion and strategic outmaneuvering, recognized that Natasha was a better fighter than she might ever be.

And so she admired her greatly.

She hadn't really had the chance to talk to the spy, but she had been introduced once, and she religiously watched every spar she could. Being put on a team with the woman made her nervous, excited.

Sakura was reminded of meeting Tsunade for the first time. The woman so overwhelming in her presence that Sakura felt like she could only shrink to compensate. It was different now, she wasn't scared, she wasn't a child, and her current circumstance left no room for hesitation. She wanted to bloom, to stand beside these women, to be equal.

They had talked most of the trip to India. Or more accurately, Sakura asked questions and received short answers, but answers none the less. Natasha was surprisingly open about some things, like the way she fought, moves she did. Things Sakura wouldn't dare to dream that she would share. Though of course, Sakura figured that whatever information Natasha gave her, the Black Widow held 99 percent of it back. She even offered to spar with her back on the ship. Sakura wondered if Fury would let her.

_Maybe if Coulson supervised?_

Natasha was well traveled too, able to speak several languages and smoothly wind her way around the world with no one being any the wiser to her exploits. Sakura envied her ability to blend into this world. She soaked up any knowledge that the woman deigned to spare and cataloged it with the same ferocity she had used to memorize Tsunade's lessons. While Tsunade's brute strength approach to life had it's perks, it decidedly had it's downfalls as well.

In the past two months, Sakura had become extremely aware that the least studied portion of her ninja career, Stealth, was so overlooked by her generation that it might have gotten her killed here if she had been at full strength and willing to fight. Her weakened position had kept her from foolhardily taking on an organization bigger than anything she had ever encountered.

Natasha, with her intelligence and watchfulness, and her carefully crafted layers that she could peel back at will made her an ideal teacher for this period of Sakura's life. Subtle and strong and fearless in a way different from Tsunade, but not inferior.

So it was a little disconcerting to see Natasha look so afraid or whatever it was that passed for fear on her face.

Sakura thought it was exposure that tempered her own misgivings. Fresh from war, Bruce Banner didn't frighten her. She imagined that he was like Naruto. He seemed nice, but had a demon inside him. Sakura wondered if like Naruto he might ever come to peace with his beast, or if it was too different a situation.

For all her deep research and careful examination of life at home, the nuances of this world's science were frustrating. Back home chakra had always filled in the intuitive leaps necessary for any scientific arts. Here each _tiny step_ had to be dissected and discussed and dithered upon until even a scholarly type like her wanted to just walk away.

Bruce Banner did seem nice though; annoyed, wary, even a little petulant, but nice none the less.

Until he had to go shouting and triggering everyone into high alert.

Outside the small house, several dozen armed agents bristled. Natasha stood firm, only the unwavering stare of her shiny eyes giving away her trepidation as she aimed her previously stashed pistol at the Good Doctor's head. Sakura, perched in the rafters, crouched a little lower, ready to drop at the first sign that Banner's melanin took on a greener tinge.

"I'm sorry, that was mean. I just wanted to see what you would do."

Sakura leaned back a little, stood up, and then silently made her way out a high window carved out of the wall. Better to keep her anonymity. After all, it was her job to put the Hulk in check if he decided to make an appearance and it was always easier to do if she hadn't had to do it in the past.

So she did what she now did best.

Lie.

She walked around and pushed in the front door, breathing hard, making a fool of herself or at least appearing to be the civilian equivalent of her persona.

"Agent Romanoff, are you okay?"

"I said stand down."

"Just you and me, huh?" the Doctor huffed softly. Natasha looked uncomfortable for a moment and then looked to Sakura with sharp interest but didn't say anything else to dismiss her. _She caught on quick_.

"And you, another spy?" Banner muttered.

"I'm not a spy. Didn't Agent Romanoff tell you? I'm your assistant."

"We hadn't gotten to that part yet," Bruce said, "I haven't even agreed."

Sakura glanced at Natasha and blinked a few times. Natasha lowered her gun to her side and smiled coolly, "When you have, we'll be waiting in the car. We're leaving in ten."

She passed by Sakura, clapping a hand briefly to her shoulder.

"I don't think Fury would appreciate that you assigned yourself a position."

"I don't think Fury has a choice if he wants to keep me around as a leash."

"Don't bite the hand that feeds you."

"I wouldn't have to if they didn't starve me."

Natasha's eyes lingered, but then she turned, gathered her shawl and left. Sakura cleared her throat and looked to the Doctor.

"So...do you need any help packing?"

His eyes were brown, no flecks of green or anything. Not filled with rage or anger or fear even. He was exasperated though and so Sakura considered it a good enough start to phase one of her plan.

* * *

"I don't know why you brought me along. I can't help you. I won't help you."

"You will serve your purpose eventually. There's a reason you were with the Tesseract."

"He's an important prisoner," Dr. Selvig said.

"Agent Barton?"

"It's true. He's like you, not from here. He knows more than he's telling. He like the other one."

"The other one..."

"A girl, she arrived when he did. Came through a portal."

"I see. How did you open path between worlds?"

"I can't do it again. I don't have the ability anymore. I wouldn't do it if I could. I've had some experience with what you're doing right now and I can tell you that you're making a mistake and I don't want any part of it. "

"What is your name, stranger to Midgard?"

A silence stretched thin like piano wire.

"...Obito, his names Obito, Sir." Barton answered.

"...I see. How intriguing. Well, if you won't talk, then perhaps I'll have a conversation with your companion instead. She may be more inclined to speak if she has the proper incentive. Put him back in the cage, Barton."

"Yes, sir."


End file.
